Democratic Republic of Congo ACCELERE!1 (A!1) Project Findings and Recommendations
Early Grade Reading Assessment and the Book Supply Chain
ACCELERE!1 (A!1) improves educational outcomes for girls and boys through improved teaching and learning in national languages (Kiswahili, Ciluba, Lingala) and French, reducing barriers to education, and increasing transparency of school governance structures. In support of the GDRC’s effort to improve education access and quality, in 2015 USAID and UKAID launched the A!1 program to improve learning outcomes for students in formal and accelerated learning programs.
Early Grade Reading Achievement and Context in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
This Technical Brief describes the challenges of access to education faced by Congolese early grade students. It covers the issues of the quality of education, the solutions implemented by the A!1 project to help address the challenges identified, the lessons learned from the project, and the recommendations for future programming.
In preparation for A!1, a third-party evaluator conducted a baseline Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA). The assessment found that pre-reading and reading skills in three national languages (Kiswahili, Lingala, Ciluba) for Grade 3 students and in French for Grade 5 students had not changed much from the 2013 assessment and were not sufficient to enable them to read with comprehension at grade level. Even at Grade 5, students were only reading an average of 11 correct words per minute.
Book Supply Chain: The Process and Cost of Getting Teaching and Learning Materials to Kids Technical Brief
The Book Supply Chain Technical Brief presents recommendations for future implementers on keys to a successful teaching and learning materials supply chain in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This technical brief presents the technical and logistical challenges encountered by the A1 project during planning, forecasting, title development, publishing, printing, procuring, and distributing training and learning materials to Congolese students, teachers, directors, and inspectors and provides recommendations for future implementers on keys to a successful teaching and learning materials supply chain in DRC.